Let me be clear from the start (so you take any sarcastic comments further down with a grain of salt) that I am a social liberal, and believe that everybody should feel free to do whatever they want with their life, with their body, and everybody else should respect that, as long as they’re not hurting anybody.
Bruce Jenner is now Caitlyn Jenner, and we have to refer to her as her and I can deal with that, even though it seems a bit odd to me. The last picture I’d seen of her before today was most definitely him. Then comes the Vanity Fair article and BOOM!, it’s Caitlyn, looking just as female as if she’d been born that way. She’d said she was transitioning, but this was no gradual

Caitlyn Jenner

transition. It looked like she stepped into a gender changer machine, fiddled with a couple of dials, and came out as a woman. Modern technology is amazing.
There are a couple of points I don’t understand, though. First, is this a lot more common than I thought it was? Caitlyn Jenner is not the first person to do it, not even the first famous person. Chelsea Manning and Chaz Bono come to mind. Then, as I read through the comments on facebook it seems like a lot of people ‘have a friend’ who’s either transitioning or has transitioned. They are more common these days than people who are allergic to gluten, it seems. So, I want to know. Just how common is this nowadays?
Secondly, I don’t understand the psychology of Jenner herself. She is 65 years old. She will never experience the fun of being a young woman (although, I must admit, for a 65 year old woman, she is smoking hot), she will never have the experience of child birth or breast feeding. Is it really worth all the hassle just to be able to dress up in women’s clothes and go out for brunch with the other old ladies.
Also, for someone who has always identified as a woman, she’s got some very manly accomplishments under her belt. College football, Olympic Gold (in a men’s event), spokesperson for Wheaties, actor (in some very manly roles, father to a whole slew of children, step-father to a whole bunch more.
So, why now?
I suppose, in the end, that’s nobody’s business but Caitlyn Jenner’s.